Comments

Comment by TAT0

Cost=1 Unholy rune? wow I see big changes in Unholy and Frost rotation with this and Howling Blast having their cost changed :o

Comment by icritmypants

More damage, less cost, and this plus festering strike will take all your runes. Its perfect!

Comment by Nimmersatt

The damage caused by Scourge Strike is more complicated than that of all other DK abilities. This is because you have the physical damage and its modifiers as well as the shadow damage based on diseases and its modifiers, some of which are separate. For comparison with Wrath, also, Unholy DPS'd in Blood Presence granting the damage bonus, where now it uses Unholy for haste, which makes moves hit for less, but more often.

Again with the math, when you have three diseases up, you get 116.04% of the physical damage done as shadow damage. Added to the physical damage, you get a grand total of 252.04% weapon damage or an overall increase of 58.00% from LK. Given the crit reduction of 18% (9% in Subversion, 6% in Corrupted Strikes and 3% in Ebon Plague) as well as the crit bonus being reduced from 2.3 (2.369 with gem) to 2.0 (2.06 with gem), the increase seems reasonable to balance things out.

Now the 252% WD of a Scourge Strike may seem minor compared to the maximum 328% WD of a Frost DK's Obliterate, however Scourge Strike only costs one rune compared to Obliterate's two, thus making two Scourge Strikes cause 53.66% more damage than one Obliterate.

Edit #1: Updated

Edit #2: Massive recalculations, given the bonuses effect only the base damage and not the bonus' stacked

Edit #3: Removed the effects of Blood Frenzy/Savage Combat and Ferocious Inspiration/Arcane Empowerment because they effect all weapon damage from all classes, not just a DK's Scourge Strike

Edit #4: Updated for patch 4.06

Comment by arthas95

Comment by idhauntthat

If only this did all shadow damage...seems like the damage will suck since the bonus shadow damage is BASED ON the physical damage. Also surprising this deals physical damage since Unholy focuses the most on magic/disease damage compared to blood and frost.

Perhaps U-Dks already have enough damage to "compensate" for the seemingly low physical-based damage of this ability.